Jaylen Brown was the MVP of both the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals during the Boston Celtics’ championship run last year. That was with Jayson Tatum still doing plenty of heavy lifting as the team leader in points, rebounds and assists.
Now the Celtics are going to need Brown to step up without Tatum by his side – for whatever is left of this season, and possibly for most or all of next season as well. Tatum went down writhing in pain late in Monday’s Game 4 loss to the New York Knicks with what appeared to be a serious lower leg injury.
While coach Joe Mazzulla did not have any detailed update on Tatum after the game, the unspoken fear for everyone is that Tatum tore his Achilles. That fear could become a reality as early as Tuesday, when Tatum and the Celtics will get the results of an MRI.
UPDATE: The Celtics announced on Tuesday that, as feared, Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon. He underwent surgery on Tuesday, and there is no timetable for his recovery.
The Celtics are now in a 3-1 hole in the series and must somehow try to regroup for Wednesday’s Game 5 in Boston without their best player. Beyond that, their plans for next season could now be dramatically altered as well.
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“Next year's probably a wash [if it’s an Achilles],” Jermaine Wiggins said Tuesday on The Greg Hill Show. “If it is, you really won't get Jayson Tatum back to Jayson Tatum form until the following season.”
“Which for [new Celtics owner] Billy Chisholm, a massive issue ahead of him,” Courtney Cox added. “Because now does he want to unload guys like Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingis, Payton Pritchard, whoever it was on the cutting list for him? And I hope that it wasn't Jaylen Brown. You don't want to let go of a guy like that now if you're going to be without your superstar for your first season as the owner of this franchise.”
“If you're the Celtics in this situation, it's where do you go from here?,” Wiggy asked later. “And you have maybe two potential avenues to go down, right? If Jaylen Brown can show that – maybe they don't win a championship – but can show that, ‘OK, I can be the guy. I can put this team on my back. Maybe I can make it a competitive series and maybe push it to a Game 7.’
“Then maybe the Celtics go, there's two ways of thinking if you're Bill Chisholm,” Wiggy continued. “Hey, we have a massive asset in Jaylen Brown that we can maybe potentially move on from and get pieces that we can build a future for when Tatum comes back. Or you could say, we have a guy like Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum when he comes back. Now we can maybe move on from Derrick White, Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, get some younger players back, because that could be a nice package piece. Get some younger players back and now build a completely different-looking team with the two Jays.
“There’s two avenues, if you're Chisholm, you could potentially go down because of this injury. And I think a lot is going to be determined on what Jaylen Brown looks like, especially the beginning of next year heading up to the trade deadline.”
Regardless of what happens in the offseason or next year, in the here and now, the Celtics’ only chance of mounting any sort of comeback in this series is for Brown to take over. He has not had a very good series so far, shooting an inefficient 37.7% from the field and 22.6% from three. That will need to change.
“I mean, it's going to be on [Brown] tomorrow night, and the rest of the series if they survive tomorrow night,” Greg Hill said. “He said the other night he's the best player [getting to] the paint in the NBA, period. So, I would expect that the best player steps up and is able to lead your team when you lose somebody like Jayson Tatum. So, we will see. I just don't feel very confident about it.”
Brown knows what the challenge for him and the rest of the team is going to be.
“I think everybody’s concerned with Jayson,” Brown said Monday night. “I’m not sure how bad it is. Didn’t look great. But I think everybody is kind of more concerned with (the injury). Obviously, the loss is huge. But we’ve got to get ready for Game 5, so we’ll take the night and pick our heads up tomorrow and put together a game plan to come out on our own floor to keep this series alive.”